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“Noir is a niche job designed for the visually impaired,” said Sister Kim Phung Le, the director of Saigon’s Nhat Hong Center for the Blind in Thu Duc District. Le often recommends people for employment at the restaurant. “When you go to work, it’s not charity anymore, you need to show you are a worker.”

“Ho Chi Minh City is one of Asia’s fastest-growing, most vibrant cities, and its gastro scene is no less exciting. Joining the city’s famed street food dishes are increasingly sophisticated fine-dining offerings. Noir is Saigon’s answer to the ‘dining in the dark’ concept, giving visitors the unique sensory and culinary experience of eating a meal in a pitch-black restaurant.”

“Have you ever closed your eyes to savour a delicious piece of food or an elegant drop of wine? Take away visual stimulation and your world shrinks. Senses become sharper and that mouthful of food or sip of wine leaps into sharp focus.”

Sensory overload: Is the smell of chocolate in the dark even more tempting? To debate this and other important culinary questions, try Noir – a tasty indication of Ho Chi Minh’s increasingly sophisticated gastro scene.

“If a candlelit dinner is so conventional, a dinner in a totally dark room can excite you.

The idea is that when you cannot see anything, your other senses will be stimulated and you may find yourself doing or saying surprising things. You may be so brave you can end up proposing after dessert!”

Hailing from Assen, The Netherlands, Germ Doornbos is now running a restaurant in Vietnam with blind employees and where one is dining in a pitch-black dining room. The concept seems a hit.

Germ and his partner Vu Anh Tu opened their own restaurant a year ago and is rather a success; hence they are opening a second restaurant soon. Almost as special as the first one, this time with deaf persons in the service team.

When your endeavor isn’t only about opening a location, however has much more meaning at its core you will see great things can be done no one ever thought of. Unemployment in Vietnam is very low, however within the community of blind people unemployment is close to 90%. With this in mind and the possibilities of creating an amazing venue was only the start of Mr. Vu Anh Tu and Mr. Germ Doornbos. Germ was very clear in his vision of their success; “ success to me is to focus and believe in what you are doing, a good dose of passion is needed and I always believe you have a successful restaurant if with everything you do you have the guest in mind. However at Noir – Dining in the Dark; Vu and Germ created an amazing experience for their guests and an equally fantastic job opportunity for the blind waiting team. Employing only blind waiters to serve in “the dark room” they artfully managed to cross boundaries from a difficult situation to a great experience. According to Vu “the difference between good and great is in the details”. And at the beautifully designed Villa in which Noir is located you can see that passion and detail come full circle.

Taipei Times . by Dana Ter - Features reporter“Murder mystery games and dining in the dark are among the must-do in the Vietnam’s largest city, which has increasingly more to offer than war memorabilia”

We are on a Culinary Delights of Vietnam tour, hosted by celebrity cook Jax Hamilton and myself – a joint venture by House of Travel and The Travel Club with Avenues.

Noir, a dining-in-the-dark experience in booming Ho Chi Minh (Saigon), in the south of Vietnam, is the ultimate exercise in trust. And not just of the chef and staff preparing the food. Diners are served dishes and drinks by 11 blind and visually impaired staff. I've ordered a chardonnay, to be safe, but I needn't have worried. The dark is their world, in which we are fumbling, accidental tourists. Tonight, the blind are our guides.

Saigon is booming on all fronts and nowhere more so than in the world of gastronomy. Noir is one of the most exciting new arrivals. There are just two delicious set menus (Asian and Western) and you dine in an entirely blacked out room, served by immensely helpful blind, English-speaking waiters.

Diners will enjoy food and talk in absolute darkness. This is to create an “honest” when enjoying the dishes as well as help eliminate any distance away in the interaction between people to bring about most comfortable feeling.

Dining in the dark restaurants have occurred in many countries around the world but this is the first restaurant in Vietnam. Typically vision accounts for 70% of information transmitted to the brain so if dishes are invisible, it will help diners’ senses become more sophisticated, sharp and sensitive.

Housed in a beautifully restored French colonial-era building, Blanc serves up refined Vietnamese fusion (…) The twist: the staff are hearing impaired, and diners are encouraged to interact with them using pictographs of Vietnamese sign language.

“Thankfully it didn’t take much research to come across Noir. Being ranked as one of the top restaurants in HCMC with solid outstanding reviews on Trip Advisor, I was naturally curious to find out more.”

“Dining in the dark concept has been around for quite some time and I am so glad that I have made it eventually. If you are comfortable with stepping out of your comfort zone to the world without sight and putting yourself in the hands of some of the best staff I have had the pleasure of being served by, then Noir is an excellent choice.”

Soon after arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, I was texting back and forth with my dad. (For those who don't know, I definitely inherited my food obsession from him, and not from my mom, whose favorite food is toast.) He is always ahead of the game when it comes to different foods and restaurants to try. Sometimes he even asks where we're planning on eating and then, after checking out their menu online, offers advice on what we should order. It may sound crazy to some, but I love him for it.

The city of Saigon on any day is a heady onslaught on all of your senses with its chaotic traffic, tooting horns, street food stalls, neon lights and general excitement around every corner. So to find a dark and silent sanctuary in the centre of this heaving city is heaven to the senses.

Valerie writes briefly about her dining in the dark experience on her blog that reflects on taking pleasure in the good things in life. Part 2 to follow, stay tuned.

“The dining in the dark concept features in many cities across the world. The experience challenges you to appreciate both the food in front of you, and what it means to be sightless. And without the crutch of your mobile phone, placed in a locker outside, you need to rediscover the art of conversation too!”

“This is an extraordinary culinary adventure, but it is so much more than that. Like meditation, it is an opportunity to go within and spend some time alone, experiencing the multiple wonders of what it truly is to be human with all of the senses, feelings and thoughts within, and to be thankful for the things we take for granted – especially our sight.”

Luxury traveler Simon Frew passed by Noir. Dining in the Dark and awarded the experience (6 out of 5 ‘teddies’) –“it was a special, and humbling, experience anyone visiting Ho Chi Minh City should try. Be ready for an emotional roller coaster and evening of laughs”.

I can attribute the correlation between sight and taste to the fact that sense of sight is the strongest human sense. Hence, sight dominates our perception of food also. But eating without knowing what was served was a food ‘discovery experience’. The curiosity to discover all flavors of the dish made me eat each dish till the last bite. I was surprised at myself as I was trying on new recipes and enjoying them sans any. It was about activating all other senses to enjoy food. This enhanced sense of taste and smell helped me be less judgmental about what I see and based judgment purely on taste.

When eating, “taste” is top of my list for enjoying a meal. I’m usually willing to try most things but if it doesn’t taste good I’m not going to repeat the experience. But it’s easy to forget how important the other four senses are until we are challenged...

NOIR. Dining in the Dark opened in Ho Chi Minh City in October last year. It has already attracted a lot of attention and I found endless Excellent reviews on Trip Advisor. The restaurant aims to boost awareness toward the visually impaired and blind community in the region. A staggering 94 per cent of blind people are unemployed in Vietnam. Noir has trained 11 waiters and waitresses in hospitality service excellence - transforming their prospects in life. In the pitch-black restaurant we are reliant on them as we enter their world of darkness for a fleeting moment, a transfer of trust is essential.

The food experience gave us a real insight into how much we rely on visual perception in our enjoyment of food…and how susceptible our sense of taste is to suggestion. If one of us said out loud what we thought something was, all of a sudden we’d all taste that flavour…whether it was correct or not.

This is a definite highlight of our stay in Saigon, and one I’d recommend to all visitors.